Maximum Quality Performance
With all its bells and whistles turned on, Thief is very demanding, even at relatively low resolutions such as 1680x1050. It takes a GeForce GTX 780 or Radeon R9 290 to break an average of 60fps while the HD 7970 GHz Edition and GTX 770 both fell short by 1-3fps.
Thief plays well with an average of 50fps though gamers will still want an HD 7950 Boost or GTX 680. The HD 7950 and GTX 760 each offered 46fps while the R9 270X (HD 7870) managed 45fps.
At borderline playable performance, the GTX 660 Ti rendered 42fps and the R9 265 gave 41fps while the GTX 660, GTX 750 Ti and HD 7850 dipped into the 30s, which suggests that folks with these cards may want to play at a lower quality setting.
Jumping up to 1920x1200, even the mighty GTX 780 Ti was limited to 68fps while the R9 290X and GTX Titan both averaged 65fps. Meanwhile the R9 290 hit 60fps and the GTX 780 fell just below the 60fps.
At 51fps, the HD 7970 GHz Edition was a few frames faster than GTX 770 while the standard HD 7970 averaged 47fps to match the R9 280X.
The game starts to become unplayable as the R9 265 drops to 34fps and the GTX 660 offers just 31fps.
At extreme resolutions such as 2560x1600 gamers will likely want to employ more than just one GPU as the world's fastest single-GPU card, the GTX 780 Ti, averaged just 48fps. The R9 290X wasn't far behind at 45fps while the R9 290 and GTX 780 both averaged 41fps.